The Press FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1968. The Politics Of Direct Action

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31729, 12 July 1968, Page 10

The Press FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1968. The Politics Of Direct Action

Mr Kirk’s appeal to freezing workers to lift their ban on the handling of meat for export deserved a considered reply from representative meetings of union members; it got a peremptory negative from a single spokesman. If the rank and file of the freezing workers’ union go ahead with their plan to disrupt a vital export industry, freezing workers cannot expect the support of political Labour. Everything Mr Kirk has said on the wage issue, including his extempore speech to the demonstrators in front of Parliament Buildings last month, makes this clear. He has tried to persuade trade unionists and their officials to pursue their claims by constitutional means; in particular, by making a further approach to the Court of Arbitration.

Other trade unionists who may be tempted to follow the freezing workers and the brewery drivers in resorting to industrial blackmail should think twice and yet again. They will be fighting not only the employers but the Government, which is bound to intervene to support the lawful processes of conciliation and arbitration; and they can count neither on the support of political Labour nor on any considerable public approval. The Leader of the Opposition may now be in a better position than the Minister of Labour (Mr Shand) to avert industrial action which would undo much of the recent recovery in the country’s economy. The hard political reality of the present situation is that the electorate will make no fine distinctions between the industrial and the political wings of the Labour movement if serious industrial unrest plunges the country back into a balance-of-payments deficit and an economic crisis. Both the Labour Party and the country as a whole have more to lose now from industrial lawlessness than they had during the comparative prosperity and security of 1951.